December 10, 2003

Jewish Cemetary at Auschwitz vandalized...

from Little Green Footballs a link to a Jerusalem Post article (registration required for this):
bq. "Those who have damaged the cemetery at Auschwitz intended to hurt the sacred memory of the Holocaust. This is in reality a shocking demonstration of the incendiary hatred on the extreme fringes of Europe, a hatred which threatens not only the Jewish people but the entire world."
bq. The cemetery was established more than two centuries ago by the then-vibrant Jewish community in the southern Polish town.
bq. Menahwile, Nazi slogans, swastikas and SS marks were sprayed with red paint on four gravestones in a Jewish cemetery in Achim, 20 km east of Bremen in north Germany on Sunday night.
bq. On December 1 the Babi Yar memorial, consisting of a large menora, two large stones, and a plaque donated by President Moshe Katsav in January 2001, had been overturned and partially broken by vandals.
bq. In early November, vandals desecrated a Jewish cemetery in the western Slovak city of Puchov. They overturned 22 tombstones, out of which six broke into several pieces. It was the second desecration of a Jewish cemetery in the western Slovak region of Trencin in two weeks. The first occurred at a Jewish cemetery in Nove Mesto nad Vahom in October.
bq. On November 11, vandals desecrated the tombstones marking the graves of 15 Jewish girls who died in a Nazi concentration cap near Trutnov, 120 kilometers northeast of Prague.
bq. On November 27, vandals desecrated tombs at a Jewish cemetery in southern France, carving swastikas and other Nazi symbols into the headstones. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin condemned the attack in Marseille as a 'hateful manifestation of anti- Semitism.'
There are a lot more of these listed in the news article. Old Europe is not a place to be now - for all of its history, it is devolving into thugishness.
Geee - I wonder what the intelectuals are saying...
In an interview in the U.K. Independent, Noam Chomsky was asked the following question by journalist Ricardo Parreira:
bq. Is anti-Semitism on the increase?
[Chomsky]: In the West, fortunately, it scarcely exists now, though it did in the past. There is, of course, what the Anti-Defamation League calls "the real anti-Semitism", more dangerous than the old-fashioned kind: criticism of policies of the state of Israel and US support for them, opposition to a vast US military budget, etc. In contrast, anti-Arab racism is rampant. The manifestations are shocking, in elite intellectual circles as well, but arouse little concern because they are considered legitimate: the most extreme form of racism.
(emphasis mine)
The Independent website pulls materials that are more than a week or two old and charges for access. Fortunatly, Pejman Yousefzadeh had it posted on his blog herePosted by DaveH at December 10, 2003 4:55 PM